Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Surfing today, I noticed Joe Barden Engineering now has a set of Rick 4001/3 replacement pickups. They are humbucking. If they're as good for a 4001/3 as his Tele pickups were for Danny Gatton, this might actually be something to give a second glance to if the noise absolutely, positively has to go away:

http://www.joebarden.com/main.php?secti ... geID=R4000

I may get slated for this but in my own opinion the Rickenbacker bass has never needed any other pickups bar for there own. By that I mean that no other pickup that I have seen/heard has ever reproduced that classic Ric sound, it's like a Harley Davidson it has that sound that you know what it is.

interesting-they look just like bill lawrence pickups,which i used to have in a bc rich bass years ago. i seem to remember them as being rather dark-sounding,but that could also have been due to the bass being all mahoganey.

woodyng wrote:interesting-they look just like bill lawrence pickups,

That's what I thought too!

Yes, they are very similar in appearance. But they are very, very bright-toned pickups. In a Guitar Player humbucker shootout some years ago, the Barden humbucker was described as being very bright, almost "hi-fi" in tone; the antithesis of a P.A.F.

Very cool! I would love to try these as I have tried almost every other possible pickup in a Ric... the only exception being Seymour Duncans, never was interested in those.

cassius987 wrote:Very cool! I would love to try these as I have tried almost every other possible pickup in a Ric... the only exception being Seymour Duncans, never was interested in those.

And by the fact that you still have all RIC pickups in your bases, can I assume that means they still sound the best to your ears? I myself can't imagine swapping my pickups out, even when I consider the 60-cycle hum.

Very interesting. Hope to hear them sometime. I had been looking for replacement pickups to use in my 4003 and decided to keep it all Rickenbacker with HB1s. Those Bardens look tempting though.

Intriguing. I still don't understand why nobody has tried building a stacked-coil humbucker pickup for the 4001/4003, ala the Fender noisless design. I would think a stacked coil design would kill the 60-cycle noise, & come much closer to the actual sound of a genuine Ric pickup than a side-by-side humbucker could.

coolingitdown wrote:

cassius987 wrote:Very cool! I would love to try these as I have tried almost every other possible pickup in a Ric... the only exception being Seymour Duncans, never was interested in those.

And by the fact that you still have all RIC pickups in your bases, can I assume that means they still sound the best to your ears? I myself can't imagine swapping my pickups out, even when I consider the 60-cycle hum.

Actually one of my basses has those Jason Lollar "Broilers" in it but my other pickups are all RIC--one bass has an HB-1 and a 4002 humbucker paired up, one has three Toasters, and finally there's the one with the stock Hi-Gains. I have a set of Bartolinis around that I actually thought sounded awesome but the way they mount in the pickguard and on the phenolic plate is a bad design for compatibility with the original, it's nowhere near as simple as it ought to be.

I have probably swapped the pickups in all of my basses at least twice, except for the 2007 4003 which is dead stock besides an RWRP mod to the bridge pickup. By now, I've practically "heard it all" as far as reversible-mod Ric pickups, and my favorite pickups? I actually think it's the modern Hi-Gains, once meticulously setup by the user. The 4002 humbucker is pretty awesome as well. I love Toasters for fretless of course and HB-1s are a solid choice. You really can't go wrong with the pickups made in-house.

These appear to be very similar, at least in mechanical configuration, to our HB1 pickup, as used in the 4004 bass. I wonder if they are encapsulated for moisture resistance and use mechanically bonded coil windings for minimized microphonics? Do they have rare earth magnets?

The HB1's mount directly onto any 4003 bass made in the last 20 plus years, without having to futz with moving existing pickup covers, rendering the old ones useless. (The mounting holes are already provided in the treble pickup plate. Two small holes will make them fit 4001 series basses, or just order a new base plate).

So the $105 price premium for the Barden's must get you something . . . I wonder what it is? I mean, the HB1's are already dead quiet and sound very much like the traditional RIC single coils.

Mr. JH, yes, I prefer the HB-1, but to my ears, being wound to @ 15kohm's worth of wire, they have too much mids and some top end rolloff to jangle properly. As much as I love them in a bass, I absolutely did not like them in my 360-12WB FG ckbd. Again I implore you to develop a true "Toasterbucker" that has chimey tone with no noise. I don't expect miracles, and I know it is physically impossible for a dual coil to sound like a single coil, but maybe a joint venture with RIC and, say, Kinman might produce something really, really, nice.

After all, the Fender noiseless was mentioned above, and that was a joint venture between Fender and Bill Lawrence, who was also a pioneer of blade polepiece design, of course.

I think it's the "rails" on the p/up surface-they look cool.(yes, I am a pathetic aesthete ). . . but I'd just stick with the HB1s; they sound killer on every 4004 I've played.

iiipopes wrote: ... I know it is physically impossible for a dual coil to sound like a single coil, ...

They will sound like a single coil if you wire the two coils in parallel instead of series.

ken_j wrote:

iiipopes wrote: ... I know it is physically impossible for a dual coil to sound like a single coil, ...

They will sound like a single coil if you wire the two coils in parallel instead of series.

+1, or at least, extremely close.